The Forbidden Trail

Roger was awakened the next morning by the sound of Dick uncrating the new pump. He rose at once feeling quite himself. He had his belated breakfast alone, with Charley hovering in attendance.

"Ernest and Gustav are down at the old camp as usual," she reported. "What are you going to do to-day, Roger?"

"I want to go through Von Minden's papers. If I'd done a thorough job on that in the beginning, all the trouble might have been obviated."

"I don't know about that," said Charley. "It couldn't have been foreseen that Ernest would get in touch with Werner."

"Will you help me?" asked Roger. "I want to get through before Werner comes."

"Are you feeling fairly calm for the interview, dear?" Charley smoothed Roger's hair back, caressingly.

"Calm!" Roger suddenly caught the girl to him in a passionate embrace. "Calm! I don't want to be calm when I think of you and all you are to me. Oh, my darling, my darling!"

With Dick and Elsa's help, the Von Minden papers had been thoroughly gone over by mid-afternoon.

It was well on toward four o'clock before Ernest appeared with his unwelcome guest. Dick had descried a dust-cloud on the Archer's Springs trail about three o'clock and they all had seen a buckboard with two figures in it drive into the Sun Camp.

"Werner must have come," said Roger, only half succeeding in keeping his voice casual.

Dick nodded. "Hackett was telling me that he'd finally made up his mind to get a tin Lizzy. These old-time cowboys do certainly hate to give up their horses, don't they? But when the Chinaman said that he was going to buy a jitney for the miners, poor Hackett had to give in. Of course, he'll still have to use his horses and the pack-train for mountain work."

Roger grunted absentmindedly and stored Von Minden's box in the kitchen, as Hackett drove Werner and Ernest up to the corral.

Herr Werner, badly sunburned and dusty, seemed unfeignedly glad to have reached the ranch. He greeted Elsa and Charley effusively, shook hands with Dick and showed Roger a mixture of cordiality and deference in manner that was irreproachable.

Left alone in the living room with Roger and Ernest, he came to the point at once: "Wolf tells me, Mr. Moore, that you have been much angered at his selling the solar device to me."

"I certainly have been and I haven't the least idea of letting the thing go through," replied Roger. "A considerable part of the money you advanced has been spent but I shall spend no more of it and my friend Preble can arrange a loan that will cover what has been spent."